Posted on 10/22/2009 9:23:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The congresswoman takes sides against a Republican candidate, and rumor is the former governor may too.
As a rule, special elections held to fill open congressional seats aren't the most exciting events. But the campaign in New York's 23rd congressional district is starting to get pretty interesting, with an intra-party squabble on the Republican side of things getting more juice by the day.
The district leans Republican, and the seat has been in the GOP's hands to this point -- the race is being held because Rep. John McHugh resigned when President Obama named him secretary of the Army. But it's still upstate New York, which may be more conservative than the state as a whole but is still pretty moderate by comparison to other Republican-dominated areas of the country. So the party chose a moderate, State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, as its nominee. That enraged conservative activists, who've given their support instead to third-party candidate Doug Hoffman.
Scozzafava still enjoys the support of establishment Republicans, but her campaign's been imploding quite publicly lately under the strain of Hoffman's candidacy. Now, the independent is getting a further boost as the GOP continues to splinter over the race. In an appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., appeared to endorse Hoffman, saying, "Hoffman is on the ascendancy,” she said, “and we have to win this seat, and people need to get behind the winning candidate, and it looks like that’s Hoffman.” (As David Weigel points out, Hoffman's actually polling in third place; the Democrat, Bill Owens, is in first place.)
Bachmann has a fair amount of conservative supporters these days. But she doesn't have anything close to the star power of another woman rumored to be ready to endorse Hoffman: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
At this point, even an endorsement from Palin probably wouldn't be enough to put Hoffman over the top. But it could certainly have an impact, if not on this race than on the candidates Republicans pick for 2010; the national party would probably be forced to go farther to the right than it would like in some areas, which could benefit Democrats.
Also don't forget that paleoPaulie and most of his political love slaves occupy a different universe seldom visited by the rational folks among us.
Except on abortion, your home page suggests that you are far more libertarian than conservative. Your opposition to abortion is good and certainly the most important issue but more is needed.
Given the current effort by the likes of paleoPaulie to undermine patriotism in the GOP and the nation, to speed up the Obama-intended loss to Islamofascism, to slacken the production of weapons systems and their provision to our allies, his two-faced stuffing of pork into federal appropriations bills that he then votes against while collecting the pork, and a wide variety of two-faced positions on social issues in which he poses for holy pictures as conservative while shucking and jiving (wink, wink!) around federal responsibility to outlaw abortion and "gay""marriage", among other things, and the fact that you actually gave money to advance the paleosurrender artist's campaign by sending him money, then, intentionally or otherwise, you have made yourself an enemy of the conservative movement, of America and of actual Western Civilization.
That doesn't mean that you aren't a swell husband and father and welcomed enthusiastically by your dog and snuggled by your kitties when you get home from work at night.
Scozzafava needs to become national poster broad for what happens to reds and social revolutionaries posing as Republicans in public life. She should be crushed, should be relegated to a distant third place. If the election goes to the Conservative Party candidate Hoffman, great!!! If the Demonrat is elected, we shall survive. Scozzafava's election would be the worst outcome. Hopefully she is now where Titanic was ten seconds before the broken wreck wound up on the ocean floor. Next up: purge the GOP leadership lemmings in NY-23 who inflicted this disgrace on the GOP and see to it that DeDe is primaried out of her state Assembly seat.
If Bloomberg is a conservative, then so must Mao Tse-Tung have been. Giuliani is better but no conservative. Bill Buckley ran as a conservative. It's been 44 years since then. Maybe someone should run as a conservative again. Or maybe this is the race for which God invented libertarians??? Then San Fran Sicko, Sickago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc.
I disagree with you on some (maybe many) issues but I certainly don't want you banned from FR. Nor would most of those whom I regard as my friends here want you banned.
Nonetheless, the libertarian tail ought not and will not be allowed to wag the conservative St. Bernard.
Actually, paleoPaulie is an Al Qaeda first kind of guy as he proved in his last year's embarassing POTUS campaign imitating Baghdad Bob. If that makes you and the Nation and the New Republic hallucinate that I am a ninety-year old NYC intellectual (the actual neocons who are now mostly dead) formerly socialist and now come to rationality in resistance to communism which took over their Democrat Party, fine. Actually, I was a Reagan state chairman in those days when he challenged Ford. I was also a state chairman of YAF, YRs and CRs. If that adds up to not much different from marxists in your imagination, then you should study on that and see whether you can figure out why libertarianism has been such a total political failure in our nation. I also used to be a state libertarian officer until I grew up (around the time of Roe vs. Wade) and left the libertarianism behind.
I am a Roman Catholic but Israel is our ally in the war against Islamofascism generally and there is (at this time and for the foreseeable future) no real room for respect for dissent on that. Conservatives are the movement of Ronald Reagan and not of David Duke. We are also NOT the movement of Neville Chamberlain, of Ron Paul, of Rand Paul, of upChuck Hagel, of Weepy Walter Jones, much less of Justin(e) Limpwrist Raimondo any more than we are of Dennis Cuckoocinich.
Your attention is called to this thread. Start at #103 and trace backward. God bless you and yours.
Also, because of a law called Wilson-Pakula, you can be registered in one party and run on another party's line--AND run on your own party's line at the same time. We are majority-Democrat but have all these other parties pulling in different directions, so it is like a six-way tug-of-war sometimes and does not submit to the usual analysis of spoilers and throwing votes away etc.
The area is poor and people rely on Government subsidies.
Check out the way some of them voted.
The Dems are the party of deception.
If they try this in 2010, we need to pin them down on what they would be for and what they would be against on each smaller issue of the larger conservative issues on which they take a stand. The public is 99% ignorant and will take a candidate's stated macro position at face value.
Yes, have also noticed the Paulistinian FReepers try to relate Paleo Paul with Conservtive Republican Sarah Palin.
This is an insult to Sarah who supports America and understands when America has been attacked and thousands killed and then the enemy Al-Qaida declares war on America,
we take it to the enemy, not to waite for more attacks
as they have promised.
Sarah’s son just returned from serving a year in Iraq.
The Liberaltarain Paleo L Ron Paul does not believe Al-Qaida,and all other IslamOfascists Terrorists are a threat.
Paulie believes we should just take it and be quiet.
The brutal IslamOfascists Ahmadinejad wants America and Israel wiped off the map.
Congress voted to condemn his rantings but Paulie did not vote to condemn this IslamOfascist.
Many of the people who support Paleo Paul are 9/11 Truthers
starting with Alex Jones , Rockewll,& Chuck Baldwin.
Paleo Paul has so many more foreign policies that are right out of the Far Left.
To equate Paleo Paul with Conservative Republican Sarah Palin is a vast insult to Sarah. Sarah Palin loves and
suports America. She is also a good friend to Israel unlike Paleo Paul.
Questionable bathroom manners?
To have not demanded his resignation once that homosexual cruising behavior known was to condone that behavior. Moreover, even if it were known privately but not publicly he should have been asked to not run again, shut out of support. Why? To allow an opening for a person of better character.
“Meanwhile Michael Steele says he isn’t concerned about the fact that Party identification has fallen to 20%.”
fyi, that poll was a bogus one. real GOP party ID is around 30%, depending on how its asked. The poll was pure pollaganda, designed to inflate support for ObamaCare.
Good to hear. But Steele’s reaction to it is still inappropriate. There is still a gap between us and the Dems, and even for all their troubles and the good generic congressional numbers our party ID is not increasing.
As opposed to The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Upper Manhattan, and just recently Wall Street.
But risks must be taken.
It is a desperate time for our Republic.
If we do nothing, we are assured of enslavement. This might represent the beginning of the beginning of our very final LAST CHANCE to turn things around from the course they are headed, under the current Obama/Socialist Dems-RINO alliance.
Rush uses Barbara Streisand, I use Barry Soetoro as the expansion of BS. Whatever.
Thanks for the ping!
“The point is that even people traditionally regarded as L/libertarians and moderates who are not pro-life — exactly the people the GOP sold us out for to nominate Dede”
???? Dede is a pro-abortion liberal. It’s the non-pro-life moderate Republicans that have walked us down this primrose path to get to this point.
I too dont know what ‘fiscal conservative’ means anymore. Either you are for small govt or big govt.
As for libertarian, hannity had a young man on his show weds as a call-in who called himself a libertarian, but who was for healthcare for all, all sorts of govt programs... turned out he was, basically, a pot addict.
“But in fact, if you look at the voting records of people who are Republicans “except for abortion” they are also not Republicans on any other issues either.”
BINGO.
REAL conservatives are not and never were the ‘problem’ with the GOP, but people who lacked true principles and thus gave no recognizable shape to the GOP agenda. spineless weathervanes chasing popular opinion and assorted impulses ... it makes for weak politics and poor statesmanship.
Absolutely. Every single Democrat has engaged in the deception. the blue dogs are Pelosi Poodles. Every one governs to the left of their district. Consequently every single Democrat deserves to go down into ignoble defeat.
There is a very strong and very sensible strain of small-l libertarianism in the Republican Party, because there is a very strong and very sensible strain of small l-libertarian in the American mind (and, that has always been present.) I wish the last President -- whom I worked hard to get elected twice and admire greatly -- had possessed more of those libertarian impulses. I certainly wish more Beltway Republicans had those impulses. But being a capital-L Libertarian -- especially a self-identified one -- is a sure sign that you're either a kook, a Utopian, or a stoner. The mainstream organ of libertarian thought is at www.cato.org, not idiots who call in to Hannity's show.
Fiscal conservative is a cost-free kind of "conservatism," especially beloved by non-Republican-Republicans and the chattering classes who hate them, but love to beat Republican-Republicans over the head with them all the same. "Well Senator, how can you not be for Socialist Health Care? Olympia Snowe is for it -- and she's a fiscal conservative!" Riiiiiigggggghhhhhhtttt. All you need to know about fiscal conservatives is that every time in the twentieth century that congress voted to raise taxes by $1.00, they voted to raise spending by $1.41. Raising taxes looks good to reporters who don't know jack about economics but it's been the best way to widen the deficit and step on the gas to the poor house.
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